I used to hate the idea of bodybuilding. I still do.
Spending time working on nothing but a better looking body seemed to be a terrible use of time.
Of course, I wanted to look good—who doesn’t? It’s just that I wanted those looks to reflect something deeper than the fact that I’d done a bunch of sets on the tricep extension machine every day and drunk my supplement shakes.
This is what attracted me so much to Ido Portal and the movement culture. Here were people who were ripped, and looked incredible, but whose physiques came from focusing purely on function. The aesthetics were a mere byproduct of having a body that could move really well.
That ideal resonated with me: Build a highly functional body, and you will look great as an effortless result. At an intuitive level, something about it made sense.
And eight years down the road, I can now explain exactly why it makes sense. It’s not as simple as “moving better”. Actually, building the type of function that looks amazing is much more straightforward than that.
Why aesthetics will always be a byproduct of function
You can build the best looking body possible without ever worrying about how you look.
How? By doing two things, and just doing them properly.
Getting stupidly strong, and getting lean.
That’s all a nice physique comes down to:
a) Being lean (having low body fat, within a sustainable range), and
b) Having enough muscle mass to fill out your frame and look athletic.
And that muscle mass is purely a byproduct of how strong you are. A reflection of your body’s ability to generate force.
It doesn’t matter how much you think about or dwell on those two things; it’s your action to improve them that will get the result you’re after. So if you want to look as good as possible, forget what your body looks like, and start getting stronger and getting your body fat down to your ideal range. The rest will take care of itself.
How to build the ideal human physique, without worrying about aesthetics
1. Start getting as strong as humanly possible
Long term, this is what you need to do. Man or woman, young or old, fat or thin. Get as strong as you possibly can.
Start pushing every single week to improve your ability to exert force, in the basic planes of motion.
Slowly increase that, and it’s all you have to do to look like a beast.
I only use 5 movements to do this. Building your body’s strength isn’t that complicated—there’s only so many directions you can push or pull. Build the capacity to generate truly high levels of force in these basic directions, and you will look like you can (i.e., you’ll have the muscles to show for it).
2. Eat protein
This is the one most important diet factor to fuelling the muscle growth that your body’s going to be prioritising in response to the training mentioned above.
Hit 1.8g per kg bodyweight per day, and don’t stress it further than that.
For me at ~80kg, that’s 140g of protein a day.
I tend to get this from 500g meat at lunch time, which equates to 100g of protein, and then it’s easy to get the other 40g from dinner and/or some eggs or dairy.
Make your protein target impossibly simple and easy to hit, and you shouldn’t have a problem integrating this into your routine from now on.
3. Cut body fat down objectively, in short bursts (if necessary)
Long term, strength is the important thing. You’ll get jacked in a few years if you try consistently with enough intent to be stronger, and eat protein. But you’ll be improving your strength for the rest of your life. It never stops.
Body fat, in contrast, will fluctuate throughout your life. Around that muscle that you pack on year to year, you will always have a certain amount of body fat—sometimes more, sometimes less.
There’s a healthy range that this can sit in (somewhere between 8-18% for most guys), depending upon your muscle mass, age, genetics, and lifestyle factors. Anywhere within this hypothetical range will be easy to maintain, and allow you function properly, feel good, and consistently build strength.
If you want to look as good as possible, you’ll simply want to get your body fat to the lower end of this range (e.g., 8-12% for most guys). This is where your muscles are defined, your face looks the best, and you separate yourself from the crowd.
How do you get it there? A short calorie deficit. You simply want to learn to make hitting a daily 400-500 calorie deficit as satisfying and enjoyable as possible, so you can sustain it for enough weeks to get to that body fat goal. Continuing to train and consume protein (Steps 1 & 2) and making sure this deficit is moderate (no more than 500 calories a day) will ensure this weight loss is almost all fat, rather than muscle. (So for me, that looks like 2400 calories per day, under my maintenance of 2800-2900 calories.)
How do you know when you’re at your body fat goal?
Again, you don’t need to worry about what you’re seeing in the mirror—just like with strength, we can be objective about this.
1) Track your weekly average bodyweight, with the goal of seeing ~0.5kg (1lb) of weight loss a week. Note WEEKLY AVERAGE—your bodyweight will fluctuate randomly within in a 2kg range day-to-day, so it’s important stay zoomed out and consider only weekly changes, not daily. By monitoring this, you’ll know you’re making progress at the right rate week to week.
2) When the cut starts to get physically hard (assuming you’re losing no more than the intended 0.5kg per week), you’re probably lean enough. Remember, the goal is to be at the lower range of what’s healthy and sustainable. If it’s consistently tough and you’re not happy with how you look yet, you might just need to build more strength before you can get to your end-goal level of leanness. There’s no point continuing to diet down until your sex drive and happiness disappear—you’re much better off going back to gaining size and doing another cut later down the road when you’re stronger.
(If it takes you longer than 12 weeks to get to this point, I suggest having a 2-week break to eat normally before continuing on.)
Once you’re there, you can simply go back to eating to appetite and letting your body gain muscle in response to your strength training. If you reached your body fat goal in a sustainable way (not too fast) and didn’t push it too far, then you shouldn’t have a problem staying there while you pack on muscle.
A good rule of thumb to make sure you’re leaving ample room for growth, is just to use a deficit no more than 12 weeks per year. The rest of the time, just hit your protein, eat what you need, and train like a maniac to push for strength gains.
Long term, this process will work. If you increase your strength consistently towards a handful of serious strength goals, and get your body fat down to your ideal range, the aesthetics will be there without you ever once considering them—likely far beyond what you ever thought you could possibly look like. This process takes time, so it’s important you have these objective measures clear in your vision to focus on, rather than the temperamental “look” of your body day to day (which is meaningless in the scheme of things).
Where you are now is irrelevant. The progress you’re making week-to-week on your strength (and leanness, when you’re working on it)—that’s what matters. Improve those things for long enough, and your dream body will be waiting for you. I can guarantee it.